the great work of your life a guide for the journey to your true calli stephen cope

Praise for The Great Work of Your Life
“I am moved and inspired by The Great Work of Your Life, the clarity and beauty of the lives lived in
it, and the timeless dharma it teaches.”
—JACK KORNFIELD, author of A Path with Heart
“Stephen Cope has brought the full force of his brilliant mind and expansive heart to capture the
wisdom and spirit of one of history’s most revered and insightful scriptures. The Great Work of Your
Life is a remarkable testament to the power of these teachings and the timeless light they shed on how
we each can craft our most glorious life. This is a must-read for anyone aspiring to lasting happiness
and real fulfillment.”
—ROD STRYKER, author of The Four Desires
“This book extends an impassioned, compelling promise: It is possible to live this life as a direct
expression of your heart and spirit. Through masterful storytelling about extraordinary and ‘ordinary’
individuals, Stephen Cope unfolds perennial wisdom teachings found in the Bhagavad Gita that can
illuminate your path. Not just inspiring, this book is a fascinating read!”
—ANNE CUSHMAN, author of Enlightenment for Idiots: A Novel
“Stephen Cope’s brilliant re-interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita for modern seekers is the next best
thing to having the great god Krishna himself appear in your chariot—or the front seat of your car—
and give you an inspirational pep talk as you commute to work. A master storyteller, Cope examines
the lives of ordinary and extraordinary human beings through the lens of the Gita’s ancient wisdom to
illuminate how each of us can identify and manifest our unique calling—leaving his readers both
humbled and inspired.”
—TARA BRACH, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance
“Stephen Cope’s genius is to connect the ancient tale of Krishna, Arjuna, and their mythic dilemmas
to our very own lives through figures we not only admire but can relate to. The Great Work Of Your
Life fearlessly bridges this gap, and its arc is incandescent.”
—CHIP HARTRANFT, translator, The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali
“Who else could bring the ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita to bear on the lives of such a diverse
cast of seekers in such a captivating way? Stephen Cope is a masterful storyteller who grabbed me
from the first chapter and held me until the very end. His friends became my friends, his heroes my
own, and their triumphs and sorrows touched me deeply. And of course throughout, he gently reminds

us all that these profound teachings can help us show up for our own dharma and lead us to do ‘small
things with great love.’ ”
—LINDA SPARROWE, editor in chief, Yoga International and author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga
and Health
“The Great Work of Your Life is a timely and timeless must-read book. Within its pages, Stephen
Cope contemplates the profound meaning of the Bhaghavad Gita, as it applies to our modern life.
Exploring the call of dharma, he shows Krishna’s step-by-step teaching in a way that will uplift you
from within. It’s essential for those new to yoga and inspiring for the seasoned practitioner and yoga
teacher.”
—PATRICIA WALDEN, international yoga teacher and co-author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and
Health
“Stephen Cope presents an insightful look at the role of dharma as explained by Krishna to Arjuna in
the timeless scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Skillfully interweaving Arjuna’s story of conflict and doubt
with stories of both great and ordinary men and women, Cope illustrates how the rich wisdom of the
Gita can transform our actions into spiritual practice and guide us to ultimate freedom and
fulfillment.”
—PANDIT RAJMANI TIG UNAIT, chairman and spiritual head, Himalayan Institute
“The Great Work of Your Life masterfully unfolds the stories of everyday people like you and me, as
well as those whom we cherish as our heroes and heroines, revealing the doubts, fears, trials, and
passions we will all face when we dare to live an authentic life of purpose and meaning. It will
deeply inspire your heart, soul, and mind and lead you ever more deeply into finding and celebrating
your own dharma.”
—RICHARD MILLER, PhD, author of Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and
Healing, president, Integrative Restoration Institute, and co-founder, International Association of
Yoga Therapy
“This is a captivating and compassionate guide to the deepest questions of our existence. Stephen
Cope ingeniously helps us to ‘remember’ who we really are, uncovering genuine happiness and
expressing it through our dharma, our authentic work in the world.”
—SARAH POWERS, author of Insight Yoga
“Stephen Cope hands us the secret keys of understanding and wisdom found in the sacred pages of the

ancient Bhagavad Gita. He asks us the right questions, provokes, and motivates us with courage not to
retreat from the world but to advance with profound enthusiasm.”
—LILIAS FOLAN, PBS host and author of Lilias! Yoga: Your Guide to Enhancing Body, Mind, and
Spirit in Midlife and Beyond
“Cope weaves together personal narratives of ordinary and extraordinary lives within the framework
of the Bhagavad Gita, making the timeless scripture even more relevant to the intricacies of our
twenty-first century lifestyle. A pertinent book, for NOW!”
—NISCHALA JOY DEVI, teacher, author of The Healing Path of Yoga and The Secret Power of Yoga
“The Great Work of Your Life is a portal into the soul of yoga. It reveals how fresh and versatile the
wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita is for people of any era or stage of life. This book is a must-read for
anyone wishing to penetrate the mystery of what the ancients called karma and dharma and we
moderns call living an authentic life.”
—SCOTT BLOSSOM, LAc, CAS
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Cope
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Permissions constitute an extension of this copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cope, Stephen.
The great work of your life : a guide for the journey to your true calling / Stephen Cope. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53568-9
1. Spiritual biography—Hinduism. 2. Vocation—Hinduism. 3. Bhagavadgita—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BL1170.C67 2012
294.5′44—dc23
2012000863
www.bantamdell.com

Jacket design: Carlos Beltran
Jacket photograph: © Don Klumpp/Getty
v3.1
Every man has a vocation to be someone:
but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this
vocation he can only be one person: himself.
—Thomas Merton
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
A Note to the Reader
Introduction
PART I
Krishna’s Counsel on the Field of Battle
ONE The Four Pillars of Dharma
PART II
The First Pillar: “Look to Your Dharma”
TWO Jane Goodall: Trust in the Gift
THREE Henry David Thoreau: Think of the Small as Large
FOUR Walt Whitman: Listen for the Call of the Times
PART III
The Second Pillar: “Do It Full Out!”
FIVE Robert Frost: Find Out Who You Are and Do It on Purpose
SIX Susan B. Anthony: Unify!
SEVEN Camille Corot: Practice Deliberately
PART IV
The Third Pillar: “Let Go of the Fruits”
EIGHT John Keats: Let Desire Give Birth to Aspiration

NINE Marion Woodman: When Difficulties Arise, See Them as Dharma
TEN Ludwig van Beethoven: Turn the Wound into Light
PART V
The Fourth Pillar: “Turn It Over to God”
ELEVEN Harriet Tubman: Walk by Faith
TWELVE Mohandas K. Gandhi: Take Yourself to Zero
Epilogue
Dedication
Notes
Permissions
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
A NOTE TO THE READER
This is a book about dharma—about vocations and callings. It contains many stories of illustrious
lives—true stories of lives that many of us already know and admire. It also contains stories of what I
have called “ordinary lives”—lives that are in many ways just like yours and mine. I have included
so-called ordinary lives for a reason: It is impossible to understand the living truth of dharma without
getting close to the lives and experiences of real practitioners. But in writing an “experience-near”
account of these ordinary lives, I have had to face a difficult challenge: how to tell the stories of my
friends, students, and colleagues without invading their privacy. I have chosen in almost every case in
this book to create composite characters—sticking as closely as I can to the emotional and
psychological truth of real experience, while creating essentially fictional characters and dialogues.
Many of us will see aspects of ourselves in these characters and conversations, of course, but, aside
from a handful (whom I have given their real names), the “ordinary” characters in this book do not,
and are not meant to, represent any actual persons.
One additional proviso: The book that you are about to read is an examination of dharma in the
light of the teachings of the two-thousand-year-old Bhagavad Gita. But this book in no way purports
to be a scholarly or technical exegesis of the Gita. Many fine scholarly treatments of this scripture are
readily available. This book is something altogether different. What follows is an experience-near
account of one practitioner’s thirty-year engagement with the Gita. Its purpose is simple: to awaken

the mainstream reader to the genius of this magnificent text, and to elucidate—through stories—some
of its most important principles for living. It is my hope that the reader, once alerted to its genius, will
go on to investigate the Gita’s complex and subtle teachings more closely—and at that point, more
scholarly treatments of the text will become useful and, indeed, invaluable.
INTRODUCTION
What do you fear most in this life?
What is your biggest fear? Right now.
When I pose that question to myself, the answer is this: I’m afraid that I’ll die without having lived
fully. OK, I’m also afraid of pain—and of dying a difficult death. But that’s for later. Mostly, right
now, I’m afraid that I may be missing some magnificent possibility. That perhaps I have not risked
enough to find it. That maybe I’ve lived too safe a life.
Thomas Merton says, “What you fear is an indication of what you seek.”
In my case I think this is certainly true. And deep in middle age, I can feel the seeker in me become
just ever-so-slightly desperate.
One of the ways this desperation shows up is in my reading. I’ve always been a reader, to be sure,
but lately the temperature on the dial has been inched up. Something new: I’ve become a voracious
reader. I am hungry to hear other people’s answers to my questions—particularly other people who
might be experts in this problem of possibilities: Thomas Merton, Garry Wills, Henry David
Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Karen Armstrong, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost.
These are just a few exemplars of the struggle to live fully who tumble around in my head. What can
they teach me about desperation and fulfillment?
And so, I read. Usually from about 8:00 to 11:00 every night—often propped up in bed, with an
unruly stack of books perched on the table next to me. I read with pen in hand, and have lively
conversations with my authors. I scribble in margins; I make exclamation points and stars; I draw
arrows from one page to another, tracking arguments.
Every now and then, in my quest for answers, I stumble across a sentence that stands up and shouts
at me from the page. Here is a sentence I read recently in the pages of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth
what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
What?

I sat up in bed. I circled the whole sentence.
If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within
you, it will destroy you.
I have to admit that the second phrase of the sentence hit me the hardest. It will destroy me?
In retrospect, I realize that I felt the punch of that second phrase only because I had genuinely
experienced moments of the first.
I do know the experience of bringing forth what is within me. For most of my life, these bringing-
forth moments have been fleeting. But twice I’ve had the experience sustained over a period of years.
Both times this happened while I was writing a book. Writing required everything I had, and then
some. It flayed me alive. But I kept coming back again and again. I kept bringing forth the best that
was in me. I can’t say whether the books that came forth are good or not. Some say yes and some say
no. It doesn’t matter. It seems that it was the effort required to bring them forth itself that saved me. I
noticed later that having written them did not really bring me squat, even though most people—
including myself—thought that it should.
I have friends who are right now bringing forth what is within them. Anyone can see it in their
faces. These are people who leap out of bed in the morning. They are digging down. Connecting with
their own particular genius, and bringing it into the world. They are bringing forth their point of view,
their idiosyncratic wisdom. They are living out their vocations. And let me tell you, they are lit up.
This way of lit-up living can happen in any sphere. Not a single one of my lit-up friends is writing
a book, by the way. One of my friends, Mark, is busy building a new institution—an alternative prep
school. My friend Sandy is mastering the art of nursing hospice patients. (Can you imagine leaping out
of bed in the morning to confront the dying? She does. And actually, I can imagine it.) One of my
friends is busy mastering Beethoven’s string quartets. Day and night she practices. My friend David is
on fire—creating an entirely new genre of landscape painting. Alan is mastering the art of gardening
and just, really, the art of living life as a naturalist. My sister Arlie is mastering the to-me-
incomprehensible task of parenting an adolescent—but with such relish you cannot believe it.
Have you had periods in life when you leapt out of bed in the morning to embrace your day? Once
this happens to you, once you live this way, even for a few hours, you will never really be satisfied
with any other way of living. Everything else will seem vaguely wan and gray. Everything else will
seem, as Henry David Thoreau said, like “a distraction.”

Maybe you’re saying to yourself: It’s not that black-and-white. You can’t live this way all the time.
Maybe this guy (me) is just in a dry period—something like what the Christian saints called “a desert
experience.” Maybe these dry periods are just as productive, really—and every bit as necessary—as
the wet periods. Maybe you can’t even dream of bringing forth what is within you without a requisite
amount of aridity.
This is a good point. Besides, it is impossible to tell from the outside who is and who is not
“bringing forth what is within them.” And, in truth, leaping out of bed in the morning really has very
little to do with it.
But still. There is a vast difference between the desert experience of the saints and watching
endless reruns on TV, isn’t there?
But for now, here’s an experiment. Stop reading for a minute, and ask yourself these questions: Am
I living fully right now? Am I bringing forth everything I can bring forth? Am I digging down into that
ineffable inner treasure-house that I know is in there? That trove of genius? Am I living my life’s
calling? Am I willing to go to any lengths to offer my genius to the world?
For me, truthfully, when I pose these questions to myself, I hear myself say (as I shuffle from one
foot to the other), “Well, yes, I’m just in the process of instituting a new plan that will bring me fully
alive again.” Hmm. That’s a no, isn’t it? But why is it a no for me just now? And what can I do about
it? Do I have any control over these things? Is it just, well, karma?
I see my own concerns about fulfillment played out nearly every day of my professional life. I work at
one of the largest holistic retreat centers in America—the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. We
see more than 35,000 people a year here in our sprawling, former-Jesuit monastery perched high up
in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. Our guests come for various kinds of retreats: yoga,
meditation, self-inquiry, couples’ work, healthy living. And almost every single one of them comes
here in some phase of the mission to find this secret, hidden, inner possibility spoken of in the Gospel
of Thomas.
A true story: Whenever I teach our program participants here at Kripalu, I begin by asking them to
name what they’ve come for. Seventy-five percent say it straight out: “I want to come home to my true
self.” Over and over again in almost those exact words. “To come home to my true self.” Where have
these people been? The same place I’ve been, lately, I guess: Unclear. Confused. Paralyzed by doubt.
Gliding. Drifting. Mesmerized by the old tried-and-true distractions. (And maybe some of us have

truly been in the desert.)
Most of our guests come to a yoga retreat because they know by now that the yoga tradition is
almost entirely concerned—obsessed, really—with the problem of living a fulfilled life. The yoga
tradition is a virtual catalog of the various methods human beings have discovered over the past
3,000 years to function on all cylinders. This includes everything from the world’s weirdest diets to
the most sublime forms of prayer and meditation—and ecstatic experience. One of the greatest
archetypes of the yoga tradition is the jivan mukta—the soul awake in this lifetime. The soul awake. I
like this aspect of yoga, because it means awake in this lifetime—not in some afterlife, or heavenly
realm, or exalted mental state. And so these contemporary seekers come to yoga, seeking—as I did,
and do—inspiration for living.
The yoga tradition is very, very interested in the idea of an inner possibility harbored within every
human soul. Yogis insist that every single human being has a unique vocation. They call this dharma.
Dharma is a potent Sanskrit word that is packed tight with meaning, like one of those little sponge
animals that expands to six times its original size when you add water. Dharma means, variously,
“path,” “teaching,” or “law.” For our purposes in this book it will mean primarily “vocation,” or
“sacred duty.” It means, most of all—and in all cases—truth. Yogis believe that our greatest
responsibility in life is to this inner possibility—this dharma—and they believe that every human
being’s duty is to utterly, fully, and completely embody his own idiosyncratic dharma.
Most of the people I teach here at Kripalu catch on to the idea of dharma right away. They often say
that they feel comforted that someone has taken the trouble to give a name to this urgent and irksome
call that has flashed in and out of their brain for so long, like a lamp with a bad connection.
Not only did yogis name this hidden inner genius, but they created a detailed method for fulfilling
it. In fact, the ancient treatise in which this method is spelled out is hands down the most important
and well-loved scripture in the world of yoga.
I am referring, of course, to the 2,000-year-old treatise on yoga called the Bhagavad Gita, or Song
of God. It is the world’s greatest scripture on dharma.
In India, every villager knows the story of the Gita. It is the story of the warrior Arjuna and his
divine mentor, Krishna. Arjuna is supposedly the greatest warrior of his time, but really, he is just
astonishingly like we are: neurotic as hell, and full of every doubt and fear you can imagine. The Gita
tells how Krishna taught Arjuna—even Arjuna—to embrace his sacred vocation. In India, Krishna

and Arjuna are pictured everywhere and their story is played out in temple carvings and icons of
every variety, so even illiterate folk know the tale. For two thousand years, people have read or
chanted the Gita daily, just as we read our Bible, or Torah, or Koran. The Gita is the one book
Gandhi took with him to prison, and one of the few that Henry David Thoreau took to Walden Pond.
The first time I heard the story of Krishna and Arjuna was in a World Lit course in college. I read
the book. I listened to all the lectures. And I probably even did well in the class. But quite honestly I
never got what all the fuss was about. All that has changed. Deep in middle age, I get it. Reading a
book like this is as important to me as breathing oxygen.
The Bhagavad Gita expounds an unequaled method for bringing forth dharma. At the beginning of
the story, Arjuna is paralyzed by doubt. Like Hamlet, he cannot act. Arjuna has tried to live a good
life up to this point—has tried to live out his warrior-dharma as best he can. But at the beginning of
our story, the world has momentarily crushed him. Luckily for Arjuna, Krishna is at his side at the
very moment of that crunch. The handsome Krishna is disguised as a charioteer, and he becomes
Arjuna’s spiritual teacher, his psychoanalyst, his coach, his goad, his mentor. But we—the reader—
know that Krishna is actually none other than God.
As the tale opens, our friend Arjuna has collapsed onto the floor of his chariot. Arjuna is undone by
the doubts and conflicts he faces about his own actions—his own calling—on the field of a great
battle that is about to be engaged. “What am I really called to do in this circumstance?” he asks
Krishna. “Do I fight this battle, or not?” How do I act in such a way that I do not destroy my own soul
and the soul of the world? How do I act in such a way that I fulfill my dharma?
The Bhagavad Gita is a brilliant teaching on the problems of doing. There is so much talk these
days about being. (And for good reason.) But what a treat to discover a great scripture about doing.
“All that is worthwhile,” says the great Jesuit scholar and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, “is
action.” In fact, there is no being in this world without doing. Let’s get real: Most of our lives are
spent in doing. From the point of view of the Gita, the most sublime kind of doing is really a perfect
expression of authentic being. Does this sound a little abstract? It will become very concrete as we
sort through the argument of the Gita.
Arjuna has many excellent questions for Krishna—questions to which we, too, would like answers:
Who am I, for God’s sake? And how can I authentically express all that I truly am?
Over the course of eighteen enchanting chapters, Krishna and Arjuna sort through these questions.

Krishna gives some awesome talks about action versus inaction, about doubt and faith, about
knowledge and love. Arjuna hedges his way from chapter to chapter, until about halfway through the
book, when Krishna at last has to really get stern with him. In the famous Chapter Eleven, Krishna
pulls out his big guns—and one of the world’s most stunning theophanies explodes into the
consciousness of a bewildered Arjuna. Now Arjuna really understands who he is messing with. From
here on out tumble some of the world’s most inspiring teachings about devotion, love, work, and duty.
By the end of the book, these two friends have sorted out the Truth. We readers feel sorted out, too.
If you look around, you might notice that suddenly you’re seeing the Bhagavad Gita everywhere.
Everyone still reads it in World Lit courses, naturally. But more than that. I’ve heard that it is rapidly
replacing The Art of War on the bookshelves of corporate executives.
I hope this is true. It indicates that we’re finally beginning to bring spiritual practice into the center
of our everyday lives—moving away from the misapprehension that spiritual life only happens in
church, or on the meditation cushion, or on retreat. Or that full-time spiritual pursuits are strictly the
province of those living a so-called religious life. No. Arjuna is the archetype of the spiritual man in
action.
In fact, the Bhagavad Gita was written precisely to show us how to make the world of action (the
marketplace, the workplace, the family) an arena for spiritual development. Indeed, it portrays the
“battlefield” of life—real life, everyday life—as the most potent venue for transformation.
Reading the Gita brings into stark relief a misapprehension we have about our everyday lives—a
mistaken belief about the nature of fulfillment itself. Our fantasies about fulfillment often center
around dreams of wealth, power, fame, and leisure. In these fantasies, a fulfilling life is one in which
we acquire so much freedom and leisure that we no longer have to work and strive. Finally, once
we’ve worked most of our lives to extricate ourselves from the demands of ordinary life, we can
relax by our own personally monogrammed swimming pool—with the gates of our country-club
community firmly locked behind us—and there, at last, find true happiness, and real fulfillment,
perhaps contemplating the clear blue sky.
The teachings of the Gita point to a much more interesting truth: People actually feel happiest and
most fulfilled when meeting the challenge of their dharma in the world, when bringing highly
concentrated effort to some compelling activity for which they have a true calling. For most of us this
means our work in the world. And by work, of course, I do not mean only “job.” For many of us—as

for Arjuna—the challenges of our vocation in the world require the development of a profound
degree of mastery. Those who have had a taste of this kind of mastery have experienced moments
when effort becomes effortless: joyful, gifted, and unbounded. These moments of effortless effort are
so sublime that they draw us even more deeply into the possibilities of our vocations. At the end of
life, most of us will find that we have felt most filled up by the challenges and successful struggles for
mastery, creativity, and full expression of our dharma in the world. Fulfillment happens not in retreat
from the world, but in advance—and profound engagement.
The two-thousand-year-old Bhagavad Gita brings us a series of surprising principles for living an
optimal life, and for transforming skillful action into spiritual practice.
In 2005, I became director of a new institute at Kripalu, called The Institute for Extraordinary Living.
Our goal was to do rigorous scientific research on fulfillment—to understand skillful living of the
Gita brand and to examine the ways in which it may show up in our time. Are there some people who
really do live their dharma authentically, and in a fulfilling fashion? Do we know them? Are there any
characteristics that consistently mark their lives? Do these people, in fact, jump out of bed in the
morning? What might Krishna and Arjuna’s teachings on dharma mean for us?
Our quest to understand these things has led me to an intensive study of so-called “great lives”—
the lives of those who have obviously brought forth their genius into the world. You’ve heard briefly
from a few of these characters already in this introduction—Thoreau, de Chardin, Merton—and
you’ll hear much more from them and many other such “greats” throughout the course of this book. I
have learned a tremendous amount from my study of these well-known exemplars of dharma,
including the very reassuring fact that the whole lot of them had just as many doubts and neuroses and
fears as the rest of us. Often more.
Along the way, I have looked, too, at what we might call “ordinary lives.” You and me. And what a
bonfire of inspiration came from this study of ordinary lives. It turns out that among so-called
ordinary lives, there are many, many great ones. Indeed, for me there is no longer really any
distinction at all between great lives and ordinary lives.
I must admit that this surprised me at first. If it surprises you as well, I suggest that you look
carefully about your own neighborhood. There are people all around you right now living out their
vocations—strange vocations you never even imagined. It is not so easy to tell from the outside
whether someone is fully engaged in his dharma. This is because dharma draws forth an ardency so

deep—and sometimes so secret—that it often cannot be detected by ordinary eyes. Perhaps the
neighbor who you think is profoundly strange because he stays inside and collects stamps and
sometimes forgets to put out his garbage and doesn’t come to the annual block party—perhaps he is
utterly involved in his sacred calling. Perhaps his single-minded efforts have lifted stamp collecting
to an entirely new level of genius. Perhaps he has penetrated the mystery of stamps, or is about to do
so. Inside he glows, but you cannot see it. But I tell you this: You are more likely to have X-ray eyes
for such things if you are also pursuing your own dharma with the same ardency.
And this brings us to you: Do you fear that you may have missed the boat? That you’ve become
unmoored from your true calling and are drifting aimlessly out to sea?
Here is another surprise that may buoy you up. Most of the ordinary people whom I have studied,
when first confronted with the notion of dharma, imagined that for them to claim their dharma
probably meant inventing an entirely new life. Giving up their job selling insurance and moving to
Paris to paint. Quitting their job as a hospice nurse and sailing around the world solo. Not so. As it
turns out, most people are already living very close to their dharma. Really. Within spitting range.
What is the problem, then? These same people, close as they are to the deepest mystery of dharma,
know very little about it. They don’t name it. They don’t own it. They don’t live it intentionally. Their
own sacred calling is hiding in plain sight. They keep just missing it. And, as we will see, when it
comes to dharma, missing by an inch is as good as missing by a mile. Aim is everything.
Come with me, then, and with my fellow students of fulfillment as we tell the story of Krishna and
Arjuna, and as we tell stories of great lives that vividly reflect the principles of living as they are laid
out in the Bhagavad Gita. Bring your fears and neuroses and doubts; do not leave that excellent fodder
behind. Bring your desperation and your most ardent wishes for a full life. Gather ’round the fire with
the rest of us ordinary human beings, as we investigate the not-so-far-fetched possibility of becoming
fully alive.
As the curtain rises on Chapter One of the Bhagavad Gita, we are at the scene of an impending battle
—the fabled battle of Kurukshetra, in the North Indian Kingdom of Kuru. Krishna, the charioteer, and
Arjuna, the young warrior, have driven their chariot to the edge of the battleground. Arjuna surveys
the scene, and speaks urgently to his charioteer: “I see omens of chaos, Krishna.” As we survey the
battlefield in our mind’s eye, we feel—with Arjuna—a visceral sense of foreboding. The narrator has

already told us that the forces of light and the forces of darkness are about to collide, and that this
battle will tear the fabric of the world.
As early readers of the Gita would have been all too aware, this is indeed no ordinary battle. The
battle of Kurukshetra is the definitive struggle of its age. It marks the end of one great mythic era
(yuga, or world age) and the beginning of another. The battle of Kurukshetra ushers in the Dark Age
—the Kali-yuga—the last of the four great eras foreseen by the Seers of ancient India.
Imagine our two heroes as they prepare for this world-shattering conflict.
Krishna, the charioteer, is dark-skinned and handsome. He is steady. Regal. Unwavering. We’ll
find out later, of course, that he is God in one of his many disguises.
Arjuna, our bold warrior, too, is handsome. But not so steady as Krishna. He is young and brash
and immature. He is highly prized by his family, and idealized by the common people. He is
something of a golden boy. (Do you have one of these in your family? They can be terribly irritating.)
There is no doubt, from the very outset, that Arjuna is an exceptionally brave warrior, though he does
not yet possess the supernormal powers of the yogi. All that is yet to come.
“Krishna,” says Arjuna as the narrative opens, “halt my chariot between the armies! Far enough for
me to see these men who lust for war …”
Arjuna surveys the scene of the impending battle. And what does he see? A sight that undoes him.
Arjuna sees his own kinsmen arrayed against him. He sees, as he says to Krishna, “fathers,
grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, and friends” gathered in the opposing army.
His own family has taken up arms against him? How did we get to this disastrous crossroads?
We need a little background here. The Kingdom of Kuru has been ripped apart by a now-
generations-old conflict between two different but closely related lines of the royal family: the
Pandavas and the Kauravas. The Pandavas, as you have probably guessed, are Arjuna’s family, and
they have come to be known as “the forces of light.” The Kauravas—their conniving cousins—have
by this point earned their name as “the forces of darkness.” They have illegally usurped the throne of
Kuru, and destroyed the peace and well-being of the people.
As Arjuna surveys the impending conflict between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, he sees “omens
of chaos.” He sees the breakdown of the harmony and order of family and kingdom—an order highly
prized for the peace and well-being that it fosters. He sees, too, his own family deeply stained by the
forces of disorder—by avarice, and the lust for power, land, and fortune. The forces of greed, hatred,

and delusion are the destroyers of the world order and purveyors of suffering.
Arjuna, observing all of this, is loath to become part of the pernicious disorder infecting the
kingdom. He is reluctant to take his part in this battle, even though it is manifestly his sacred duty.
“Conflicting sacred duties confound my reason!” Arjuna cries to Krishna.
A cry of doubt! Arjuna is split down the middle. How should he act?
As a great warrior, Arjuna has always known that his sacred duty is to fight on the side of “right”
in a just war. And according to the rules of war so clearly laid out in the scriptures—rules that are as
close to Arjuna as his own heart—this is, indeed, a just war. The peace of the kingdom has been
profoundly disrupted by the unjust usurpation of the throne. The forces of greed and disorder have
triumphed. The people of the realm will suffer as a result of this unjust usurpation. It is Arjuna’s duty
to fight.
And yet. He is confronted with a problem above and beyond the ordinary challenges of war. He
sees that his own people are standing against him. Will he kill them? If he does, he will have
committed the heinous sin of fratricide, and he will take on the karma of this act, and suffer for many
lifetimes to come.
However, if he does not act, he will betray his “code”—the sacred duty that has given his very life
meaning.
Arjuna is caught on the horns of a vicious dilemma. “We don’t know which weight is worse to
bear,” Arjuna says to Krishna, “our conquering them or their conquering us.”
Arjuna feels the conflict viscerally. “Krishna,” he says:
“My limbs sink,
My mouth is parched,
My body trembles,
The hair bristles on my flesh.
The magic bow slips
From my hand, my skin burns,
I cannot stand still,
My mind reels.”
Arjuna sees clearly that having executed his sacred duty, having slain his own kinsmen, he will not
himself be able to go on living: “We will not want to live if we kill the sons of Dhritarashtra

assembled before us.”
What should he do?
Arjuna does, perhaps, the most sensible thing possible: He falls to the floor of his chariot.
“I cannot fight this fight,” he cries to Krishna.
And then Arjuna falls silent.
ONE
The Four Pillars of Dharma
From the very beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we can see that it is going to be a teaching about
dharma—about sacred duty. Anybody can see that the first chapter is a device used by the author to
set up the problem of vocation. How do we know, finally, to what actions we are called in this life?
The author knows that we’ll identify with Arjuna’s dilemma: How do we choose between two
difficult courses of action? What are the consequences of an inability to choose, or of choosing
poorly? Who can effectively guide us in making these choices? Finally, in any ultimate sense, does it
really matter what choices we make with our life?
At the outset of this tale, the narrator describes Arjuna as paralyzed by doubt. He has come to a
crossroads in his life, and is forced to choose between two difficult paths. And for the time being
Arjuna has demurred. He is stuck on the floor of the chariot, unable to act at all. From the beginning,
then, it is clear that the narrator sees Arjuna’s central affliction as the problem of doubt.
For those of us who study the contemplative traditions, this is exciting. Something new! Until the
writing of the Bhagavad Gita, the Eastern contemplative traditions—both yoga and Buddhism—had
almost universally seen grasping as the central affliction or “torment” in the lives of human beings.
These traditions had come to really understand the afflictive nature of desire, craving, grasping,
greed, lust.
Grasping will come into Krishna’s teaching, to be sure. But at the outset of the tale, Arjuna’s
central torment is not grasping. Or even its flip side—fear and aversion. No, it’s clear to us that
Arjuna is not really so much afraid as he is immobilized in a web of doubt. Stuck on the floor of the
chariot.
In the fourth chapter, Krishna will state the principle clearly: “Doubt afflicts the person who lacks
faith and can ultimately destroy him.”
This doubt of which Krishna speaks is the outward and visible sign of an inner struggle. And if this

inner struggle is not resolved, it will (as St. Thomas declares in his Gospel) destroy him.
The stakes are serious. It will be important for us to understand the exact nature of this doubt that
afflicts our hero.
Notice that “doubt,” as used in the Gita, is somewhat different than our ordinary Western
understanding of doubt. When we think of doubt, we most often think of what we might better call
“healthy skepticism”—a lively mind, closely investigating all options. That is not quite what the Gita
means. Doubt, as understood here, really means “stuck”—not skeptical. Doubt in this tradition is
sometimes defined as “a thought that touches both sides of a dilemma at the same time.” In yogic
analysis, doubt is often called “the paralyzing affliction.” Paralysis is, indeed, its chief characteristic.
It follows, then, that doubt is the central affliction of all men and women of action.
The Catholic Encyclopedia weighs in convincingly on this issue. Apparently, doubt is an issue for
Catholics as well as Hindus: “Doubt,” it reads, “[is a] state in which the mind is suspended between
two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them.”
Catholics and yogis are apparently in agreement about this phenomenon of doubt.
The Catholic Encyclopedia continues at great length. “Doubt,” it says, “is opposed to certitude, or
the adhesion of the mind to a proposition without misgiving as to its truth.”
Here the Catholics make an opposition of doubt and certitude. This, I think, is very helpful.
And listen to the definition of certitude that follows. Certitude: “the adhesion of the mind to a
proposition without misgiving as to its truth.”
Without misgiving!
In Arjuna we have a hero whose doubt is writ large. He is split down the middle. And it will take
the entire eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita before he gets to certitude. But what a thrill when he
does.
“Krishna,” says Arjuna at the very end of the Gita, “my delusion is destroyed, and by your grace I
have regained memory; I stand here, my doubt dispelled, ready to act on your words!”
My doubt dispelled!
Until I began to wrestle with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, I thought that doubt was the least
of my problems. Grasping and aversion, the classic afflictions pointed to by the earlier yoga tradition,
were much more obvious in my life. However, as I have begun to investigate the Gita’s view of
doubt, and as I begin to understand what doubt really is, I see it at work everywhere. I’ve begun to

see the ways—both small and large—in which I am paralyzed from action on a daily basis. Split.
Replete with misgivings. Unsure. A foot on both sides of various dilemmas.
We can see why the yoga tradition has called doubt “the invisible affliction.” It is slippery.
Hidden. Sneaky. Indeed, it is this very hidden quality that gives doubt its power. I know people who
have been stuck in doubt their entire lifetime. Each of these unfortunate individuals—some of them my
very own friends and family—came at some point to a crossroads. They came to this crossroads and
found themselves rooted there, with one foot firmly planted on each side of the intersection. Alas,
they never moved off the dime. They procrastinated. Dithered. Finally, they put a folding chair smack
in the center of that crossroads and lived there for the rest of their lives. After a while, they forgot
entirely that there even was a crossroads—forgot that there was a choice.
We do not suspect the ways in which doubt keeps us paralyzed. Plastered to the bottom of our
various chariots. Unable to assent.
I see it all the time in the people I work with at Kripalu.
Just to give you a taste of how these things show up, let me give you a thumbnail sketch of one of
these people, a woman whom I will call Katherine. She has recently come to one of these fateful
crossroads, and has already put down her folding chair.
2
Katherine has been for many years the dean of a small private girls’ school—a school that one of my
friends calls Crunchy Granola Hall. Katherine is loved by several generations of students: mothers
and daughters. For years she has lived squarely in the center of her dharma, her sacred duty. She has
changed lives. Anyone who knows her would declare that she has thrived in the role of dean of this
school: counseling and befriending faculty and students; helping chart the course of the school; raising
money for new buildings. Now, however, she is tired. She is irritable and pissy with her faculty. She
forgets to attend important meetings. She is, if truth be told, finished. In her heart of hearts she knows
it. In private she admits it to me: She no longer even cares.
But Katherine is terrified. And completely unsure of what might come next. She is afraid that if she
leaves the deanship, she will be devastatingly lonely. That only her cats will need her. She knows
there is a new dharma calling her, and in fleeting moments she sees it out of the corner of her eye. She
occasionally gets a whiff of a calling that feels more real than rain: Perhaps she could teach English
literature to her young charges. She could be free of the wearying burdens of deanship. She could

work only a few hours a week. She could garden (her passion)!
Katherine can occasionally visualize how perfect this would be, and how well it would meet her
energies at this stage of life. English literature has been one of her most enduring loves. She could
transmit it to the girls in small doses. When she visualizes this new dharma, she feels the possibility
of living once again. But then the fear comes. Maybe she won’t get invited to all the important
powwows about the future of the school. Maybe they’ll think of her as washed-up—consigned to the
oblivion of the educational North Forty. And then she thinks, “Perhaps I should stick it out for another
year. There will be just a little more in my retirement package, too.” Katherine has been paralyzed by
this conflict for more than three years, and she is not a happy woman. “Living a lie,” she has even
said to me after several glasses of wine.
Katherine is stuck. She might well say with Arjuna, “Conflicting sacred duties confound my
reason!”
3
There are many ways to be quietly paralyzed by doubt. We might call Katherine’s version Fear of
Closing the Door. I see this version quite frequently. Someone has had a profound taste of living their
dharma, maybe even for decades. But now that particular dharma is used up—lived out. You can
smell it. This person knows that a certain dharma moment is over but has only the vaguest sense of
what must be next. It increasingly begins to dawn on her that in order to find that next expression of
dharma she is going to have to take a leap of some kind. She knows that she is going to have to close a
door behind her before she will find the next door to open. And gradually she comes to the edge of a
cliff, where she knows a leap of faith will be required. This is where she sets down in her folding
chair. Will she ever get up?
Fear of Closing the Door is one version of dharma paralysis. But there are many others—countless
others, really. Let me recount just a couple of these to you, so that you can get a flavor of the
possibilities.
4
Katherine’s story is rather dramatic. But here is a different kind of dharma problem that is perhaps
closer to home for most of us. Let’s call this one Denial of Dharma.
My friend Ellen and I were talking one day over brunch. I was telling her about the work of our
Institute, and asking her about her own life—her own vocation. “Well, I don’t really have a calling,”

said Ellen a little wistfully. “I wish I did. But I don’t.” Ellen was at that time a head nurse in the
psychiatric unit of a local VA hospital. I knew—because several of her colleagues had told me—that
she was greatly respected, and even loved, in the hospital. She was knowledgeable, professional,
masterful. Always learning more. A hard worker. As she described herself, though, she was “just a
regular old worker bee—not one of those people with a high calling.”
Ellen loves to help. To support people. To love people. To be of service. Not only at work, but all
around her community in Albany. She helps Jessica, our mutual friend with Alzheimer’s. She takes
care of Bill, her friend with a brain tumor. She keeps a watchful eye out for her adult son, Jim, and his
girlfriend—helping where she can, and unobtrusively. I mean, really. Ellen is an angel for many. Her
Thanksgiving table, a meal which I attend every year, is an outpouring of generosity. Ellen gets a
tremendous amount of satisfaction out of lending a hand. She does it quietly, with no fanfare, and often
with great humor. Her best friend, Dee, told me recently that in the early years of their friendship, she
watched Ellen very closely, looking for the crack in her spirit of giving. She can’t really be that
generous, can she? She can’t really enjoy giving that much. She must secretly resent it, don’t you
think? Finally, Dee concluded with astonishment that she actually does enjoy giving that much.
Now, Ellen has a brother named Henry, who is also a good friend of mine. Henry is a well-known
film producer. He lives a crazily dramatic life. He is wildly and publicly successful. He is rich. He is
Ellen’s younger brother. But Ellen has always felt overshadowed by him. Who wouldn’t?
Ellen lives with the sense that she does not have a calling, simply because her calling is not
dramatic—like Henry’s. But she most certainly does have a calling. It’s clear to everyone around her.
Her dharma work is everywhere. It saturates her life. She lives so much in the center of her calling
that she doesn’t see it. For Ellen, her life is her dharma. It is not just about her job, or even her career,
though in her case, that career, too, is part of her dharma. Ellen is squarely in the middle of her
dharma. But she has not named it, and therefore is not, in a strange sense, doing it on purpose. All
that is left is for her to embrace her dharma. To name it. To claim it. To own it.
This is Denial of Dharma, and I see it all the time. It is a sly version of doubt. With Denial of
Dharma, there is often a vagueness, a lack of clarity—and confusion about the nature of dharma itself.
Ellen’s boat is not really sailing trimmed to the wind. But it could be. If she just took a small step
toward embracing her dharma. What stands in her way? We will examine this interesting question in
some depth as we go along.

5
And finally, here is one last example of the many forms of doubt. This one we will call The Problem
of Aim.
Let me introduce you to a man I will call Brian—Father Brian—who is a priest in a local Roman
Catholic parish. Brian was young—as most are—when he went to seminary in Boston and committed
to the priesthood. He knew he had a vocation. He felt it stirring early in his high school days, when he
admired the priests at the prestigious private high school he attended. And he had always loved to be
in church. The Church, as he once told me, always “had the magic” for him.
So what is the problem? Well, Brian is now forty-three years old, and he knows more about who
he really is. He now says he was perhaps slightly confused about his vocation. Yes, he does love the
Church, and he does believe in the Church as an important institution. But he realizes now that what
he really loves, what really gets him up in the morning, is the music of the Church. He’s an
accomplished organist. Has a beautiful Irish tenor voice. He realizes now, as he leads Sunday Mass,
that he would much rather be in the choir, or directing the choir, or playing the organ, than be behind
the altar. “I just don’t feel like a priest,” he says. “I feel like a musician. I feel like a transgendered
person before the operation. I look like a priest. But under the cassock, it’s not quite me.” He looks
down from the throne where he sits as rector, and longs to be just a part of the choir.
Oops. Brian almost made it squarely to the center of his vocation. But not quite. Close—but no
cigar. Brian lives in close proximity to his dharma—to his passion. But not in the passionate center of
it. It has taken him quite a few years to realize this.
This is not a simple problem. In fact, Brian is actually very good at being a priest. He is a
wonderful preacher—an incisive theological thinker. And though it’s true that he’s not gifted as a
counselor, and that in obvious ways he is not interested in being a pastor, he has so many of the gifts
one needs that he “passes” very well as a competent rector.
This is a problem of aim. How important is it that we live squarely in the center of our dharma?
How many of us get it almost right, but not quite right? And is a miss by an inch really as good as a
miss by a mile?
Brian has done pretty well with his dilemma, at least until recently. It seems that the older he gets,
the more he longs to live squarely in the center of his dharma, and the more he feels the accumulated
weight of a kind of creeping self-betrayal. In the past two years, he tells me, he has begun to feel

moments of desperation about it. He is angry with God. He has periods of loss of faith. He gets
depressed. And he is currently seeing a Church counselor. It is all pouring out.
Brian has finally realized that he does have the gift of a passion, but he has not been pursuing it.
He has been trying to transcend this conflict through prayer and confession, and through being as close
as possible to what he loves: sacred music. This has been, for him, like falling in love with someone
who is married to someone else, and deciding that it might be enough in this lifetime just to live next
door to the beloved.
Do you recognize Brian’s problem of aim? It’s a curious thing about dharma. It’s almost all about
aim. It appears that we will not hit the target of dharma unless we are aiming at it. And does hitting
the target matter? It does to Brian. He is on the floor of his chariot as we speak.
Katherine, Ellen, Brian. Each one of them is stuck on the bottom of their chariots. Unable to fully
assent. Lacking certitude. Their lives are colored by doubt.
There are, of course, a thousand ways of being stuck. Of being split. Freud believed that that
“split” is the very nature of neurosis. And that none of us can avoid it. It is, apparently, a part of the
human experience.
But is a life of certitude really possible? Krishna teaches that it is. But the key to living a life true
to dharma is a complete understanding of and respect for doubt. Indeed, the only way to get to
certitude is to look more and more deeply into our doubt—to shine a light into the dark corners of our
self-division.
6
Let’s revisit our friends Krishna and Arjuna. Arjuna, you will recall, is still sitting on the floor of his
brightly painted chariot, his knees tucked up tight to his chest, and his arms wrapped around his legs.
His head is slumped forward. Krisha stands next to him—silently—and Arjuna can feel Krishna’s
powerful gaze. The flags on the back of the chariot flap softly in the wind. The field of Kurukshetra—
the field of battle—seems preternaturally quiet.
At the outset of our tale, Krishna has given Arjuna a sublime speech about our True Nature. But
Arjuna is not in the mood for philosophy. He has more pressing problems on his mind. He is still
stuck—facing a devastating battle, and perhaps his own death. He is struggling with a seemingly
impossible decision about all of it. He lives in a world of immediate difficult choices.
In desperation, Arjuna has chosen the path of inaction. He has put down his folding chair in the

middle of the intersection. “If I can’t figure out how to act, I’ll do nothing at all,” he has said to
Krishna. But he does not feel good about this decision. This is familiar territory for most of us.
Krishna immediately points out the problem with this “do-nothing” strategy. This apparent path of
inaction is full of action. Says Krishna, “No one exists for even an instant without performing
action.” Arjuna’s inaction—our inaction—on the floor of the chariot, the center of the intersection, is
action motivated by confusion, paralysis, disorder. It is full of action and the consequences of
action.
Arjuna does not want to hear this. He turns away from Krishna, takes a deep breath, and lets out a
sigh. He stretches out his legs, and then slowly hauls himself to the side of the chariot, where he
dismounts. He dusts himself off, and walks around the chariot to once again survey the field of the
coming battle.
Finally, Arjuna walks back to the large wooden vehicle, and sits down on the driver’s intricately
adorned bench, motioning to Krishna to join him there.
“OK,” he says, with resignation. “So I cannot not act. I guess I see that. But then how do I act?
How do I know how to act? What is the right thing to do?”
Krishna sits down next to his young charge. He is quiet for a while. Finally, he speaks.
“Arjuna,” he begins his wonderful opening speech, “look to your dharma.”
And with this, Krishna launches into the first of many speeches about the most revolutionary
teaching of the Bhagavad Gita: the Path of Inaction-in-Action.
“There is a certain kind of action that leads to freedom and fulfillment,” Krishna begins. “A certain
kind of action that is always aligned with our true nature.” This is the action that is motivated by
dharma. This is the action taken in the service of our sacred calling, our duty, our vocation. In
dharma, it is possible to take passionate action without creating suffering. It is possible to find
authentic fulfillment of all human possibilities.
Krishna—slowly, over the course of their long dialogue—will reveal the broad outlines of an
exciting program, a path through the maze of the active life that will come to be called the Path of
Inaction-in-Action—or Naishkarmya-karman. Krishna will show Arjuna a path to the authentic self
through action in the world. Not through renunciation and withdrawal. Not through retreat—or
theologizing. And not, especially, through inaction.
Here are the central pillars of the path of action—the path of karma yoga—as expounded by

Krishna. Here are the keys to Inaction-in-Action:
1. Look to your dharma.
2. Do it full out!
3. Let go of the fruits.
4. Turn it over to God.
First: Discern your dharma. “Look to your own duty,” says Krishna in Chapter Two. “Do not
tremble before it.” Discern, name, and then embrace your own dharma.
Then: Do it full out! Knowing your dharma, do it with every fiber of your being. Bring everything
you’ve got to it. Commit yourself utterly. In this way you can live an authentically passionate life, and
you can transform desire itself into a bonfire of light.
Next: Let go of the outcome. “Relinquish the fruits of your actions,” says Krishna. Success and
failure in the eyes of the world are not your concern. “It is better to fail at your own dharma than to
succeed at the dharma of someone else,” he says.
Finally: Turn your actions over to God. “Dedicate your actions to me,” says Krishna. All true
vocation arises in the stream of love that flows between the individual soul and the divine soul. All
true dharma is a movement of the soul back to its Ground.
Over the course of the next seventeen chapters of the Gita, Krishna carefully expounds this
doctrine.